Mosaic Mennonites

Missional - Intercultural - Formational

Steve Kriss

Worthy of our Calling to Extend Christ’s Peace

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by Stephen Kriss

During the last staff meeting in this space in between, I invited my colleagues to share their celebrations and questions for the last month.   Without exception, the celebrations and questions had to do with pastors.   We celebrate the completion of pastoral search processes, with the beginning of Mike Spinelli’s leadership at Perkiomenville; the call of Maria Hosler Byler to an associate pastor role at Salford; Josh Jefferson’s installation and licensing last Sunday at Souderton as a youth pastor; and Sandy Drescher-Lehman’s beginning as pastor at Methacton. Many of these processes were lengthy discernments.   We celebrate the new beginnings and new possibilities that leadership can bring in the life of our communities.

Conference staff took a road trip with Pastor Bruce Eglinton-Woods (Salem), to explore the community where the congregation is ministering.

Our questions had to do with how we walk with pastors and congregations through difficult times.  We wonder how God will provide with prolonged pastoral search processes at Franconia and Taftsville.  We prayed as John Bender from Allentown who was in the hospital making difficult decisions between life and death, as he was readmitted to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia (he made the decision by the time our meeting had ended).  We prayed for an upcoming surgery that Charlie Ness from Perkiomenville will be undergoing.   These are all things we attend to as staff beyond our meeting time and carry in our hearts and heads.

The last month has meant focused attention on planning for Conference Assembly — a great time to celebrate the work God is doing in our midst, and spend time discerning and equipping ourselves for the future.  Registration and the docket are available at http://edc-fmc.org/assembly/  to help us, as a conference, prepare for assembly at Penn View Christian School.  Postcard invitations and posters will be coming to your congregations in the next two weeks. We’ve hosted and gotten some feedback from our time with David Boshart (moderator-elect) from Mennonite Church USA.  We’re prepping for his return at assembly to discuss more specific issues around human sexuality that continue to challenge our capacity to be church together, while going to the margins to be and proclaim the Good News.

Our conference executive minister Ertell M. Whigham comes back on the job on Saturday, October 1.  My season of this stretch of the race as acting executive minister has passed.  I’m ready to return the baton and responsibilities back to Ertell as he navigates the next few months.  I’ve learned a lot in these months.  I’ve been busier than usual with meetings, emails, texts and phone calls.  I have lots of hope for us as a community, but recognize our fragility at the same time.  God continues to bless us with flourishing, and challenges enough to test and grow our hearts, minds, and souls.

At the beginning of these three months, I felt drawn to the text to “live a life worthy of my calling.”  This time, ending this stretch, I want to turn that text back over to us as individuals and a community, to stay focused on the things we’ve discerned together, and to live, work and minister together in such a way that honors the sense of call that exemplifies what God has invited us toward in extending the peace of Christ to each other and to neighbors nearby and faraway.

An Update on An Experiment in Going to the Margins

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By Stephen Kriss

“The first duty of love is to listen.”—Paul Tillich

As part of our practices in this summer space in between, we’ve taken our conference staff meetings “to the margins”, which so far has meant meeting at Doylestown and Alpha congregations for an afternoon to eat, pray and learn alongside the pastors who work in those settings before engaging our regular conference staff agendas.   We’ll go to Quakertown to learn about the work of Salem congregation’s engagement with partners and neighbors yet for our last of these meetings later this month.

doylestown
Doylestown Mennonite Church

These going to the margins meetings have felt like holy disruptions of our routine.   We’ve received the gracious hospitality of Krista at Alpha, and Randy, KrisAnne and Sandy at Doylestown.  We’ve had great ice cream and burritos.   We’ve learned by listening to both the possibilities and struggles for ministry and life in one of the wealthiest communities in Bucks County, as well as what it feels like to work and hope just across the Delaware River.

Alpha Mennonite Church
Alpha Mennonite Church

I’m noticing some things that have been happening through our experiment.   Some of these things might encourage our continued journey of “going to the margins” for the sake of the Good News.   This is a small disruption, a monthly afternoon staff meeting.   But breaking our routines invigorates our conversations and builds our relationships together, differently.  We carpool.   We talk differently and about different things because we are in different spaces.  In navigating the logistics of simply going to a different location, we think differently rather than simply showing up in the same place.  Our two meetings at the margins have been times when we’ve been highly engaged with one another, even when dealing with routine tasks and procedures (seriously).   I look forward to what we’ll learn later this month.  A few staff members have asked if we can continue this kind of meeting alongside congregations’ into the future.

Admittedly, it does cost us some extra time and mileage resources to get to these places, which I’d say is well worth the effort thus far.   By eating together, we create a different rhythm of gathering that opens conversation differently.   By listening and praying with the pastors in their settings, we’ve had opportunities to both bless and to learn.   In going to the margins, we find what happens when we respond to Jesus’s declaration to go and then the transformation that happens when we listen to each other and in the midst, to sense the presence of God and discover our hearts are still strangely warmed together on the way in this time in between.

Conferring and Expecting the Spirit to Show Up

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by Stephen Kriss

This fall is a season of conversation for Franconia Conference.  As the summer winds down and the autumn is upon us, Conference staff are busy with meetings that come before our annual assembly.   The Conference’s two task forces and the Faith and Life Commission that have flowed out of our Church Together Statements continue to be accompanied by staff.  Aldo Siahaan is walking with the Faith and Life Commission while Ertell Whigham is on sabbatical.  Jenifer Erickson-Morales is working with the Addressing Abuse Task Force and John Stotlzfus with the Israel/Palestine Task Force.

In addition, as we prepare for Assembly, we’re coordinating efforts for the upcoming meeting with Mennonite Church USA moderator elect David Boshart on September 10th, open to all members of Franconia and Eastern District congregations and strongly encouraged for all Franconia pastors and delegates.  This meeting will aid in preparing us for items related to assembly and discernment.   This upcoming conversation and others that staff will be engaging with will include more information on our relationship with each other, with Eastern District Conference and Mennonite Church USA.   These all are important conversations, conferring around healthy relationships that both give and receive counsel.

Board and staff are also fielding requests from congregations that may wish to join our Conference and will need consideration at this fall’s Conference Assembly.  Some are new groups, others are migrations from other Mennonite Church USA conferences and some from other denominational affiliations.  This is careful conversation and conferring work for sure.  We’ll know more about the outcomes this fall.

Staff are also beginning to do some work as the board has requested, including analyzing the percentages of the budget used toward our goals of equipping (around 60%).  We’re also taking a look at our staff salaries as the board looks toward the upcoming executive minister transition.   It’s a time of evaluating and calibrating.

IMG_5367We’ve also spent some important time together as pastors and credentialed leaders.  It wasn’t a formal conferring time, but nonetheless a time of gathering together in Princeton for rest and rejuvenation paid for through a grant given to Everence from the Lilly Foundation toward pastoral excellence.  50 of us gathered at the Erdman Center at Princeton Theological Seminary for a day away.  We spent a night out on the town for dinner, heard jazz from the gifted Ruth Naomi Floyd, listened to the input from Calenthia Dowdy, a professor at Eastern University and Jon Heinly, a student at Yale Divinity School.  Randy Nyce (Salford congregation) and Jeff Godshall (Franconia congregation) offered input and guidance toward healthy finances for pastors/credentialed leaders for the long haul.   It was a good 24 hours together.

IMG_5385There is much happening in this space in between.   While we prepare for our gatherings later this fall, we’re conferring and discerning.  These conversations guide our patterns for life together as we seek to strengthen the life and work of congregations, ministries and leaders.   After 300 years, we are still challenged and enlivened by the possibilities around us.  We still gather to talk together, believing the Spirit shows up in our conversations, in our work, in our conferring together.

In other Christian traditions, liturgy is called “the work of the people.”  In our tradition, where community is almost sacrament, these patterns of conferring are the work of us as a people together.   May the Spirit continue to stir as we gather.

The Space In-Between: Work, Hope and Missional Operations Grants

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by Stephen Kriss

Over the last ten years, Franconia Conference has released over $500,000 through the Missional Operations Grant (MOG) fund.  These grants are tools that help instigate and cultivate missional initiatives connected with our Conference and congregations. They’ve been used broadly over the last decade to cultivate ministries in our local congregations and around the world from India to Indonesia to Mexico and the Caribbean, even assisting in the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina.

As staff work with congregations developing ministries to further the mission and vision of the Kingdom of God and Franconia Conference, they are able to help resource these initiatives with MOGs.  Our last staff meeting involved a spirited discussion how to best continue to implement and inform the use of this significant tool justly, fairly, and openly across our congregations.

11894513_866533416748400_313644984214870327_oCongregations are able to apply for MOGs and with the blessing of the LEADership Minister and congregation leadership these applications are passed on to the Ministry Resource Fund Grant Committee. The MOGs approved by the committee focus on ministries within conference congregation or partnerships between congregations and other organizations/ministries. The projects funded are intent on mutuality, rooted in considerations of justice, building on strengths, and calling forth new and next-generation leaders. To see a list of the projects funded in 2015 visit the MOG tab at: http://mosaicmennonites.org/mission/stewardship/.

Last year, due to a change in allocation of funds in the account (reduced from 20% to 10% of total available dollars), there are less funds available causing us to be more strategic this year with the reduced dollars.  Already this year 8 MOG grants have been approved mostly to our urban congregations (keep your eye on the MOG webpage at FranconiaConference.org for coming testimonies). With our average grant amount coming in at approximately $4000, we have only enough left in the fund this year to grant possibly two to three additional requests.  We’ve capped the requests this year at $5000 per congregation with only a single disbursement likely. Grants are requested through an application process that should be done in consultation with the congregation’s LEADership Ministers and then approved by the Ministry Resource Fund Grant Committee. More information can be found on the MOG tab at: http://mosaicmennonites.org/mission/stewardship/.

The grants allow the Conference and LEADership Ministers to assist in funding creative spaces for our churches.  The return on investment of these funds is high though the initiatives themselves don’t always seem successful in a traditional sense of understanding.   The grants invite our congregations to take risks for the sake of the dream of God.  We trust the outcomes into God’s hands.

Most MOG funds are sourced from estate bequests and contributions from the revenue from Conference-owned properties.   This year we are expecting to receive an estate gift that will likely allow an increase in available funds for next year.  If you’d like to help boost our ongoing capacity to instigate missional initiatives now and into the future, I’d be glad to talk with you or your congregation. You or your congregation are welcome to donate specifically to the MOG Fund as well. This is important and generative work.   It’s a glimpse of the good that comes when we can share the labor together in times of opportunity and possibility.

We still work and hope.  And we trust in the power of Christ to take our work and multiply it for the sake of the world.

 

The Space in Between: More Than We Can Dream or Imagine

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by Stephen Kriss

MiaThis past Sunday, Mia, an elementary-school-aged girl from Indonesian Light Church, told me that she thinks she might want to be a pastor.  Her mom remarked that this is a relatively new development within the last few months.   Though she tagged on that sometimes she wants to be a doctor too.  Both tough jobs, I responded.  And both things that help people, her mom said.  Her mom wondered where the pastoral desire might have originated.  There is no doubt in my mind that having Emily Ralph Servant as the congregation’s interim pastor for the past six months has something to do with it.   This young girl has experienced that women, too, might be pastors and her life is forever changed.  I look forward to the day 30 years or so from now when this young woman might be my pastor, shaped by the city, loved by a congregation, and formed as one who is loved by God.

As Franconia Conference, our focus of energy is around cultivating healthy leaders of all ages, communities and connections.   As staff, board and committees, we regularly work at this in a variety of ways.  We do this in day-to-day correspondence, strategic planning and holy conversations.   Sometimes it’s seemingly well-planned, other times it’s the Spirit’s serendipity.  I’m learning to trust that the Spirit is working out something usually beyond what we can see and often more than we can imagine, as Paul tells the early church (Ephesians 3.10).

Two research initiatives have also begun this summer that involve our Conference pastors.  As part of a project that examines the resiliency of women pastors in several Mennonite Conferences, Anne Kaufman Weaver from Lancaster County is interviewing 11 credentialed women currently serving within congregations. Currently 30% of our active credentialed pastors are women. Josh Meyer, one of the pastors at Franconia congregation, is beginning a longer examination on what sustains millennial Mennonite pastors (those born after 1980’ish).  In his initial round of research, we’ve discovered that Franconia Conference has among the highest percentages of credentialed millennial pastors in Mennonite Church USA.

Steve KrissThe Spirit is truly upon us, calling men and women, stirring the young, and giving dreams to those of us who have been on the journey longer.  May we be able to live into these possibilities that are for sure beyond even our greatest hopes and imagination.   Thanks be to God that the Spirit is undoubtedly still with us and calling among us in the space in between.

Staff Update: The Space In Between

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by Stephen Kriss

We are three weeks into Executive Minister Ertell Whigham’s three month sabbatical.   In the meantime, I’m serving as acting executive minister, which so far has meant attending to both more details and broader issues and possibilities for our community of faith together.   These months will continue to provide opportunities for staff growth and engagement in new ways.   Our conference youth minister, John Stoltzfus, is also on sabbatical, which makes the staff lean and busy for the summer.

In Mennonite Church USA, our conference currently has the most advertised pastoral openings.  We are searching for diverse leaders from Taftsville in Vermont to South Philly to serve among our congregations.   With about a dozen pastoral openings across our Conference, this is a significant time of transition and focused work.  Pastoral transitions are high priorities for LEADership Minister engagement to help keep our congregations healthy and growing.

conference assembly 2015 175This summer we, the staff, begin “Going to the Margins” staff meetings which will mean the Conference office will be closed the last Wednesday of July, August, and September in the afternoons as staff engage with our congregational communities.  Our first “Going to the Margins” staff meeting will be with Doylestown Mennonite next week where we’ll engage with pastors and spend time learning there.  I look forward to each of these three afternoon times out together.

Franconia Conference is about conferring.  There are frequent meetings and there is much planning happening for meetings coming up this fall.  Office staff work hard to ensure that we are ready to gather together in ways that are meaningful and that information flows in a timely and efficient way.  We’re in process of planning for our annual assembly and continue to work to update our pastoral credentialing records.

There is much to do.  We have many good stories to tell.   We continue to work and to hope.  I invite you to join together in prayer for the conference, staff, board and everyone across our almost 7000 people conference community as together we strive to “live a life worthy of our calling.”

Going to the Margins: A 10 year experiment in South Philly

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by Stephen Kriss

south phillyI’ve been in a lot of meetings where there’s discussion about decline in the church.  But every time I hear it, I think about the churches I work alongside.   While I know numbers are down in a lot of places, that is not the reality in most of Franconia Conference churches in Allentown and Philadelphia. In South Philadelphia alone, among three conference churches we have 500 members, almost 10% of the conference.  This past Sunday I spent the day visiting these congregation.

First I worshipped with Philadelphia Praise Center (PPC), which is my home congregation.   I was the oldest person on the platform during worship.   There’s a growing number of children and lack of Sunday school space.   Worship was energetic and bilingual.   The congregation counts about 150 people as part of the community.

After worship, I migrated down to the new building for Nations Worship Center (NWC).  The long delay with the permitting process is frustrating, so the congregation continue to meet in rented space on South Broad Street.   Worship attendance can go as high as 150 people not including special programs.  They’re anxious to finish the building on Ritner, about six blocks South of PPC’s building.   While they will be close to PPC, both churches reach different demographics among the 5000 or so Indonesian speakers in South Philadelphia.

After conversations at NWC, my next meeting was to explore a new facility for Centro de Alabanza.  Officially a conference member congregation only since this fall, the church needs to relocate again after outgrowing their worship space just off Passyunk.  It looks like they’ll move to purchase an old United Methodist building on Snyder Avenue.   Under the capable leadership of their pastors and a leadership team from across Latin America, the church continues to grow with over 100 adults and 50 children under the age of 18.

Just up north of these three properties is Indonesian Light Church.  It’s the smallest of our South Philly congregations and just joined the Conference this past fall.  Our Executive Minister, Ertell Whigham, was preaching this Sunday.  Emily Ralph Servant is serving as an interim pastor as they immerse themselves further in Anabaptist identity, and Bobby Wibowo from PPC is serving his seminary internship with the church.  Most of the church is from the Batak tribe from Sumatra, though they speak Indonesian as well as their tribal tongue with most members from the neighborhood, with others driving from New York to attend.

Over the last decade, unexpectedly, God has built a connection between Franconia Conference and the growing immigrant population in South Philadelphia.  This is what fruitful investment and going to the margins of our communities might mean over the long haul.  It’ll have meant purchasing about $1 million in property in the city and 500 members in the neighborhood.  But this work takes time and patience.  We’ve learned some things along the way.  And we’ll keep learning.

As we explore going to the margins again, as our churches in the Lehigh Valley and in South Philly begin to fill up and to represent increasing percentages of our Conference population, we’ll be required to rethink and reimagine what it means for us to be together.   And we’ll discover, hopefully, again the God who brings about transformation and even resurrection.